20 Random Facts About Stephen P Cornfoot
by Thanfiction
Summary: It was not his home, but there was someone there worth dying for. Part of the Daydverse 20 Random Facts Series


**1\. He was not Indian. **  
He was not Pakistani. He was not from anywhere in the Middle East. He was not _that _kind of Indian either. He was not Native fucking American, and as of fifth year, he wanted to beat the entire Disney animation team into all the Colors of the Wind with a side of crude jokes about fucking Kocoum. Stephen Paohkiiainima Cornfoot was First Nations, Blackfoot if you must, Siksika if you actually gave a shit. If you cared - and most didn't - they'd been a nation four times the size of the UK, or even now were about the size of Northern Ireland. If you cared - and most didn't - he could trace his name directly to Sahpo Muxika and No-okskatos, his blood was purer than Draco Malfoy's wildest dreams and bluer than Justin Finch-Fletchley Viscount of Riedhaven's most highborn ancestors. If you cared - and most didn't - his great-great grandfather had called down magic across a Confederate empire and conquered colonies the size of Europe. But most people found curry and talking raccoon jokes easier.

**2\. He was not from the Reserve.**  
He had not been born in a teepee, either. Actually, his father was a Communications Technology specialist working working with advanced cellular networks, and his mother had double PhDs in Civil Engineering and Archaeology and specialized in reconstructing ancient city infrastructures. He'd been born in Port Coquitlam, just east of Vancouver, and he' never even seen the broad plains of Alberta until he was six years old on a family vacation. He may have been a "son of the prairies" but he was _from _the shores of the Puget Sound where the Orcas played, the winding paths of Stanley park, the cafes of Commercial Drive, the whole beautiful city he missed so, so much. Vancouver was _home_.

**3\. He had not immigrated willingly.**  
His father had gotten a job offer from Virgin when he was nine, and they had relocated for what was supposed to just be five years. But then that job had promoted to a better job and Archie was about to take his NEWTs and Steve was going into third year and why not take the extension and let the boys finish their education? Archie could go to Oxford...it was perfect. Except that Steve hated it. He loathed everything about fucking England and fucking Ipswich in particular, and he stubbornly refused to assimilate. Archie had developed a British accent within a year and was talking about staying. Steve, if anything, sounded more Canadian than when he'd left, and he kept exact count of how long before he could go home. He'd tried to run away back to BC five times that first year.

**4\. He fell in love with Shakespeare when he was eight.**  
His mother had been given tickets to the Stratford Festival in Ontario. He'd seen Colm Fiore as Richard III, then again the following night as Petruchio alongside Goldie Semple's brilliant Kate, and for all his parents' concerns that he would get bored, he was anything but. The words! Oh, the WORDS! He had floated out of that theater a boy in love, and it soon became his consuming passion. By 15, he could recite all the sonnets and several of the plays, and he had come to equally love Marlowe and Bacon, Fletcher, Kyd, and Middleton. There weren't a lot of 12 year olds planning their career path towards a Professorship of Elizabethan Literature, but there also weren't a lot of 12 year olds who could that fiercely dissect the adaptation and influence of Menaechmi to the Comedy of Errors.

**5\. He was allergic to wheat.**  
His mother had been diagnosed officially with Coeliac disease two years before he was born, and it had been no surprise when both of her sons showed the same sensitivity. It was something he found profoundly unfair, because on the one hand, a single slice of bread could have him curled up on the bathroom floor for an hour contemplating the sweetness of death, with a headache to follow the next day and a rash if he was really lucky. But on the other hand, Tim Hortons. When they were six and ten, he and Archie found a twenty dollar note and decided to defy their parents and spend it entirely on Timbits. It was the sickest he ever was in his life. He was never entirely sure if it wasn't worth it.

**6\. He was amazing on roller blades**  
His first pair were a consolation prize for the fact that there was no children's hockey team in Ipswich. He'd thought they could never compare - and in most ways, he was right - but they turned out to be grand fun on their own. He was as good as any of the older boys in his neighborhood, and quickly began terrifying his mother as he took his turn at their homemade ramps and mid-air flips, rail grinds and stair jumping. Second year, he brought them to Hogwarts. There wasn't a rule _against _them. He'd checked.

**7\. His older brother was Prefect over him for two years.**  
Archie was a fifth year when Steve started, and when he was sorted into Ravenclaw as well, he'd been excited at first. He'd thought that Prefect's brother was going to mean all kinds of special privileges. It did NOT. It meant sanctioned harassment to a degree that he'd never even imagined at home, because at home, Mom didn't put up with that crap and Archie wasn't trying to impress girls. Archie was definitely trying to impress girls at Hogwarts, and his hat trick of best tactics was being a fashionable kind of foreign, being great with computers, and being Prefect, none of which included having problematically adorable upstaging little brothers who quoted sonnets.

**8\. He realized he liked boys when he was ten.**  
They got the Princess Bride on laserdisc. One week later, he had watched it fifteen times and couldn't figure out why he wanted so badly to be Princess Buttercup when he thought she was the stupidest thing he'd ever seen on screen, or why he was so disappointed when Inigo and Westley didn't kiss at the end of the sword fight because of course they wouldn't, that was stupid. Archie just meant to tease him when he asked if Steve hated Buttercup so much because _he _wanted to kiss Westley. Fortunately, he was paying attention to the Walkman he was trying to rig to be school-usable, not his little brother's gobsmacked expression. Steve tried to put up a good fight, even dated quite a few girls and kept a chart of what he liked and didn't like about each of them, but when six feet of beautiful, broad-shouldered blue-eyed blonde with a killer accent asked him out when he was fourteen, his lips said oh God yes without consulting the charts at all.

**9\. He figured out the Restricted Section**  
Umbridge had taken a giant steaming dump on the curriculum, OWLs and NEWTs were coming up, and Ravenclaw Tower was increasingly looking like it was going to get Sectioned en masse. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Tony and Mike and Terry had even let Harry Potter tutor them in an illegal DADA class, and everyone knew Terry had started draughting. It was The Tempest that had held the key, when he'd realized that the library dated back to the early 1600s. Four days of dissecting Prospero and Ariel, Caliban and Sycorax, and he became a God among mortals as the locked shelves unclasped their treasured volumes beneath his touch. For the next three weeks, he could name his price in any currency.

**10\. He successfully argued his marks up**  
He got an A on his Transfiguration OWL, which was bullshit. Transfiguration was his best subject. He'd been flawless, he knew it, so he'd submitted the written request for a full copy of his marks and review, and discovered he'd taken the hit on "proper enunciation." A dark hunch had started his research across all the records he could access or get other students to open to him, and he quickly realized that they were systematically penalizing anyone who didn't or couldn't use flawless Received Pronunciation on the spells, regardless of successful outcome. He sent a letter to the Wizarding Examinations Authority along with a brief outlining his intended lawsuit for discrimination by class and nationality. There were three weeks of silence, and then it was announced that there had been a "slight clerical error" in calculating "certain examinations" and that modified marks were forthcoming. He received an O.

**11\. He secretly carried a knife to Care of Magical Creatures**  
It wasn't that he didn't completely trust Hagrid, it was that he completely didn't trust Hagrid. He'd heard and seen entirely too many horror stories about what went on in that class, and he didn't want to take his chances on remembering exactly what spell to use against some beast they'd met five minutes ago that declined to remain Hagrid's good little docile baby. It was a silver knife with an iron shank down the middle, and he'd ventured all the way into Knockturn Alley to get it just so that he felt very sure about its ability to definitely at least slow down anything he wound up having to stick it in. Fortunately, he never did.

**12\. He went to great lengths to bootleg items from home**  
Sometimes, like assembling cheese curds and the right kind of gravy and chips, you could put it together from things in the UK. Sometimes, like Tim Hortons coffee and salmon candy and ketchup chips, he had to bribe people back home to send it to him. Canuks merchandise he had to order from a catalog, and that was expensive as hell, but that was also basically a religious purchase, and thankfully his parents understood that. His father had Fin the Whale tattooed on his shoulder, for God's sake, and it was just happy coincidence that so much of Ravenclaw school dress code allowed for things in blue and grey...it meant no one noticed when he wore Canuks socks for the entire run to the Stanley Cup in '94.

**13\. He once tried to bleach his skin**  
He knew that he favored his father, unlike Archie, who'd gotten their Mom's good skin. He'd never liked it, but as he got older, he started getting darker, and in sixth year when he realized he was darker than Padma Patil, he went to the Potions lab with a carefully copied page about mercury iodine and paper mulberry, malt rice extract and Xiang shu pi. At first he told himself the burning meant it was working, then he got scared and didn't know how to make it stop without making it worse - one of the first things they learned in Potions was never assume water is the answer - and he swallowed his pride and woke Professor Slughorn. The pitying look was almost as bad as the patronizing tone with which he'd said it was quite understandable, or that Steve noticed damned well that when Slughorn patted his cheek (_don't be silly, you have an exotic sort of charm, you should embrace it_) the hand didn't linger like it did when he had an excuse to touch Corner.

**14\. He worried a lot about being a "good" minority**  
They never let him forget he was the only, the first, they'd never met a _real _one before him. He'd been elected ambassador in so many ways without ever running for office, and it meant taking nothing for granted. If he said he wanted to take a walk outside, is that reinforcing 'commune with nature' stereotypes? Oh God, did he just actually say "eh" at the end of that sentence? Can't hold his pencil like that, it makes his wrists look fey. It's a kind of boyband hairstyle, but it's one of the only things his fucking thick stupidly straight hair with the stupid center part would do, so is it ok? And if he thought it was the hottest thing ever to imagine Derek in jeans and an undershirt covered in grease and bent over the engine of one of those cars of his but didn't know a crank shaft from a spark plug himself, did that mean he was refusing to play straight or giving in to stereotype and what was worse?

**15\. He researched for six months before he lost his virginity.**  
He was scared. So scared. Not that he didn't want to - he did so much that was at least half the fear - but because he could find eight books in the restricted section including two volumes on Tantric magic for how to do it if you were straight. But for them...everything was in whispers and rumors and cruel jokes about fisting and glory holes and leather daddies and hanky codes and weird, screwed up things that didn't sound appealing in the least when he just knew he wanted to fuck his boyfriend and get fucked without anyone getting hurt or AIDS, because it was almost impossible to get condoms and everyone said that was the only way to have gay sex without dying of AIDS and even then you couldn't be sure.

**16\. He and his brother were the vegetable ninjas.**  
In the summer before Steve's last year, his Mom lost her temper with the fridge-emptying couch creatures calling themselves sons and had them install a vegetable garden. Unfortunately, none of them knew anything about such activities, and a lot of mistakes were made about yeilds. After desperate attempts to can, freeze, give away, and eat the increasing landslide of produce, the brothers took to dressing all in black and sneaking out into the surrounding neighborhoods in the dead of night, Archie driving his veggie-stuffed hatchback as Steve sped from house to house on his skates, leaving bags of illicit produce on the front steps. They called themselves the Vegetable Ninjas.

**17\. He was an atheist.**  
He understood the value of preserving his heritage, certainly, and he participated with his parents in all the appropriate rituals, just as he and Archie had both learned to speak, read, and write High Siksika. But he did not believe that Napioa had formed the world from mud in a turtle's mouth any more than he was willing to buy that he would burn forever if he didn't believe that the Romans had played Pin the Cross on the Rabbi for the sake of his personal soul. While certainly there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in Horatio's philosophy, and while he respected the rights of others to their own opinions, Steve just couldn't feel anything other than ludicrous as soon as he attempted to ritualistically anthropomorphize the unknown.

**18\. He talked his parents into sponsoring Derek's visa**  
He tried to be rational, not to say I love him, I need him, I can't imagine leaving him. Instead he argued itt wasn't safe for Derek at home. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that if he came out and his father didn't kill him, one of his father's friends damned well might, and with the way politics were going and Derek having been so openly involved in rebellion at school, it was as good as a death sentence to leave him behind. Archie scoffed that they were just soft-hearted because Steve was in love with the boy, but he could tell there was more to it than that. They had both defied their families in leaving the Reserve for University, both received help from mentors, and they knew what it meant for a young person to be trying to better themselves, trying to get out, trying to have a chance.

**19\. He lost his blood status.**  
He received notice two weeks before spring holiday, and the entire family had to come to the Ministry. It was, his father said, obviously a mistake, because it was a summons to the MBRC, and they were anything but Muggle-Born. When they got there, however, the committee did not even open the paperwork Dad presented them. They looked at the seal of the Blackfoot Nation as though it had been written in crayon and asked if he had any real information. Steve watched his father's eyes turn to chips of granite. "These are my sons, my blood and my bone, Archibald and Stephen. This is my wife, my blood and my flesh, Dee Mia'Til. I am Tisistaawasiko, son of Matunaagd, son of Askuwhe-" They cut him off. They cut him off by laughing at him, and suddenly, the temperature in the room seemed to drop as surely as Dementors as Steve realized that none of the blood, none of the proof, none of it mattered because they were standing in a circle of those who saw them only as already conquered. They were _generously_ told they were allowed to stay to the end of the school year before they were required to leave the country.

**20\. He died with a price on his head.**  
Neville was down. Most said dead, all the reliable sources said they'd seen him crushed under the staircase and then Bellatrix on him after that. No one knew where Finnigan was. Macmillan was fighting like hell, but he wasn't taking command. Patil, Boot, Corner all down, none of the adults anything like in charge, and they were being fucking overrun. He didn't know what snapped, but something did, and Steve took command. It was easier than he thought it would be. He just started giving orders, consolidating their lines, retaking the high ground, making the enemy come to them, resuming sniper positions for covering fire while they spread the word to their scattered troops.

He was hit four times, but it didn't matter; in 20 minutes, he'd turned the tide again, and they were pushing the Death Eaters back around the east wing of the castle, at the same time herding the acromantula and giants in the other direction in the hopes of crushing their enemies in a pincers against their own living weapons. He got word then that Voldemort had offered a reward. 1000 Galleons for the Paki boy leading them. He laughed and said that he was Siksika, he didn't care anyway, and they'd be begging cease fire within 10 minutes. He was hit again in 7. Cut down and torn limb from limb in 8. Voldemort called cease fire in 10.

His ashes and his Order of Merlin were returned to Vancouver Harbor, tied with a scrap of bloody shirt his father had taken from Derek's body. He'd promised the boys they would go home together.


End file.
